If you were fat in the past and lost the weight, are you hungrier now?

[DSeid]

@Cat_Whisperer

I’m starting to wonder if being a little bit overweight might not be a bad strategy, either. I’ve lost 30 pounds, and I have another 30 to go, but I’ve hit an equilibrium now that seems pretty easy to maintain (I eat reasonably well, but don’t deny myself much of anything, and exercise daily). It would seem that my body likes this weight; another 30 pounds off would be great, but if that sends me into endless hunger and an iron-clad eating strategy for the rest of my life, I’ll take the extra 30 pounds.

That depends on why you want to lose weight and how overweight you were to start. In terms of the health benefits accrued by weight loss the lion’s of health benefits for the obese are gained by modest weight loss maintained by healthy habits long term.

Available data suggest that a loss of approximately 10% of body weight in subjects who are obese (BMI < 40) is associated with virtually maximal benefits regarding obesity-related comorbidities; therefore, further attempts at weight loss beyond this level are generally spurred by cosmetic considerations that may be not only unrealistic but also potentially dangerous. This possibility is the basis of a shift in paradigms in the medical management of obesity from a goal of massive weight loss to a goal of maintaining the highest weight possible while still eliminating obesity-related comorbidities or reducing them to minimum.

But avoiding “obesity-related comorbidities” may not be all that you want to accomplish.

BTW, kudos Roddy!

[Namkcalb]

attention seeking

As a former fat guy, you should listen to my formerly fat mouth.

The body does not like rapid changes in body weight. You gain less body weight after a big binge than if you eat the same excess spread over a week.

The flipside is true, when you loose a lot of body weight, your metabolism decreases, thus the maximum amount of calories you can eat without gaining wait plummets by up to 30%. The hormone that regulates this is called leptin, the more you have, the faster your metabolism.

To increase your leptin, you need to consume a lot of glucose.

Since my last post, I have learnt that the other monosacaride sugars, Fructose and Galactose are far less effective and there is some evidence to suggest that Fructose actually might blunt the effect of leptin.

Thus, for a period of 3 or so day, I recommend you get most of your calories from glucose.

What foods contain glucose?
Suprisingly, if a label has"sugar" or “glucose syrup”, there is actually a good chance you’ll be getting a hefty dose of fructose, so I’d look to complex carbs to meet your glucose needs.

Starch is made up from chains of glucose, maltose sugar is made up of two joined together. Don’t worry, they are all broken down to glucose in the body.

I get my glucose from potato, but I’ve heard good things about rice from some people.

On my last ‘carb-up’ day, I had 2.1kg of potato, and a can of salmon containing 120g of protein and a little healthy fat.

[davekhps]

@Roderick_Femm

When you lose weight, you don’t lose fat cells (or only very slowly), they just get smaller. And they put out chemicals, like ghrelin, to make you hungry so they (the fat cells) can get big again.

Ghrelin’s mostly put out by the stomach itself, and the pancreas, not fat cells.

[Hari_Seldon]

According to an article in Tuesday’s Science Times, hunger is not in the stomach and not in the blood but in the head. They were studying the question of whether exercise decreases or increases hunger and they were using an MRI to look at the brain. The bottom line was that for most fat people, the hunger centers in the brain lit up after exercise, while for normal weight people, the hunger centers in the brain were inhibited by exercise. That’s an over-simplification, but that was the general conclusion.

I have lost 80 pounds since about 2000, half of that in the last year and a half. I reasoned that you can’t give up eating cold turkey, but you can give up noshing between meals cold turkey and that’s what I have done. No eating between meals or before bed. None! (Except when I am on vacation and the pound or so I typically gain comes off in a week.) Since my wife has been serving modest meals since I started losing 12 years ago, this works.

But to get back to the OP, at first, I felt a big hole every afternoon and every night (times that I was accustomed to noshing). Now I don’t. I am very hungry at mealtimes, but get only a modest meal usually. Last night we went out to eat, which we do maybe once a week and I overate, but one meal has little effect.

As for exercise, I have always tried to walk 3 miles a day, and that hasn’t changed. It seems to be very hard to lose significant weight through exercise, although every little bit counts.